Sell, not tell

This is, so far, the hardest topic to write about for me, I keep on deviating to other topics, it is very hard to keep it simple without going on forever, and even when I was writing the draft pointers, I started straying away, so I will do my best to keep it within topic. Bear with me if I stray a bit and sorry if I write too long :P

"Sell, not tell". For some people it may be self explanatory, but to explain more about the concept it's important to understand that people react much better to things they share and agree with than to thing which have been imposed to them. Paraphrasing the series 'The Big Bang Theory', Leonard tells Sheldon "you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar", to which Sheldon replies, "you can catch more flies with manure, what's your point?". Well, I guess here I will answer to Sheldon a bit. Yes, you can catch more flies with manure, but, who wants to handle manure? Isn't it better get someone on board willingly than having to scream and micro-manage someone to get things done?

"Sell, not tell" can appear, in theory, to be a very easy thing to do but is not, most managers I've met in my life do not use this technique, I used it before I knew it was a technique, but I used it much more often after I met my ex boss and friend John Wagner who preached about its effectiveness in any occasion he could.

Most managers tell you what to do without any explanation on why this needs to be done, which leaves you with a sense of "this is just another task", but when someone 'sells' you the idea or task, you will instead have a sense of ownership and you will share with your boss or supervisor that task and agree with it's reasons. So far this is all nice and sounds pretty straightforward, but is not.

What if the task or order you will be asking your staff to do is something that is not wanted or unpopular? how will you handle that? Well, these questions and more could be answered dividing the problem in 2 'sell' the idea, problem task, etc. And then get them 'on-board'.

My former boss and also friend Damon Mannion used to say all the time, "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it", I couldn't agree with him more, and that brings us to the topic of KPI's (I will be touching the subject of KPI's later in a post of its own).

KPI is short for Key Performance Indicator, and these are one of the manager's most useful tools, they help us make informed decisions and take preventive or corrective actions based on numbers (I'm an engineer, I love numbers) as well as measure trends. These KPI's are also used to show the board and high executives how things are going, and that on itself can scare people, A LOT!

After this intro, you can imagine KPI's being one of the hardest things to sell to a person under your supervision or even managers at the same level - sometime KPI's are cross-departamental, so you will need another manager's help to generate your stats, and this can also be an inflammatory subject, but I will talk about that in detail later - so in some cases, you almost have no option but to 'sell' instead of 'command' what's needed.
Another thing which is a horrible thing to handle for a manager is bonuses, imagine yourself having to explain someone that he/she will have to generate metrics to measure his/her productivity and that this KPI will reflect the bonus they can get in the future... woohoo!!! How do you manage people's expectations on a budget? Most people think they're doing more than what they're receiving, and in several cases that's quite close to reality, you can't give people everything they want, even if you wish you could, because, after all you're hired to reduce cost and increase profit and blah, blah, blah, so it's your job to do so.

You may ask, where am I heading with all this? simple, to the pointers that I hope will help you in difficult decisions as this one.

First of all, always focus on the positive side, one thing that is almost a no-brainer, but I often saw lacking in my former bosses was, always start complex news and conversations with positive comments. Also remember, there is no template for challenges as this one, what someone else used, maybe not apply to your particular case, so analyze the variables as best as you can, never make promises you can't keep and don't lie (sometimes things that can't be spinned into a positive view are shared and embraced by your staff when honesty is shared with them).

Now to the point (using the example given above regarding KPI's and bonuses), sell the idea:

• Spin negativity: If you detect negativity in your staff never say something like "this will be used to calculate your bonus", say instead "this will help us see how good you're working and compensate you in a more appropriate way" or something like that, which is true! Also spin their comments into a positive outlook
• Point the obvious: You can say things like "this will help you improve yourself, see what your weak points are and I'll do my best to get - whatever you can promise - to help you improve that before your next evaluation"
• Minimize the negative: Don't talk about the money they may not get if their evaluation is non-satisfactory, speak instead of the improvements that can be reached using these tools
• Maximize the positive: Saying things like "this will show the rest of the company how hard and good we're working", "this will finally give us visibility to showcase our work and results to the upper management", etc. Be creative, but truthful, don't bullshit!
• Set checkpoints: When something like this is present in a company, you have to work with your people to allow and even help them reach their goals and objectives. Set checkpoints down the road to see progress and help them take corrective or preventive actions to stay on track 
• Create a sense of teamwork: Even though I don't believe that a strong sense of belonging is a very good thing (because it can easily cause friction between areas and departments), I do agree with people-helping-people, we all want to make more money, we all want to feel proud of ourselves, let's achieve that making our department/area the best we can, and now with these metrics we can prove we are...
• The necessary evil: Explain in a positive way that this is necessary and there's no way out, we gotta do it and we gotta do it well, same as a programmer doesn't probably like testing his code, a manager doesn't like to be told if his decisions were good or bad based on numbers, certain things are necessary and we just have to learn to live with them. Focus these as challenges with questions as "can you do this?", "are you up to the challenge?"

A similar approach with the necessary changes would apply if you have to convince a peer to help you do this, but more focused on cooperation and showing off together how good you're doing. Always give credit where credit is due...

So, "Sell, not tell" will require quite a bit of prep work from you; analyze the issue, identify pros and cons, positives and negatives, put yourself in your staff's or peer's shoes imagining different scenarios, outline a communication strategy and most important of all, let them participate in the decision making.

Yes, you got that right, my last pointer and the one that will, almost for sure, get people 'on board' with you, will be making them part of the decision making. This is a hard thing to do if your task has many constrains and limitations, as it could happen with a KPI where goals and objectives are normally pre-determined by the upper management. All this assuming the goals and objectives set by the organization are difficult, but achievable (some people call these objectives S.M.A.R.T., but I won't go into any book terminology here, you can google it if you feel like, it's kinda interesting).

Even with all that, you can still make people participate in the decision making, for this example I'd say, from the top of my head:

• Set the time for checkpoints
• Help designing the metrics and how they're generated
• Identify things that can seems as unfair by staff and maybe generate a pararel KPI with those 'ifs' included into the filters and deliver it to the upper management for consideration or comparison
• Set parameters (i.e. seniors and juniors will be judge differently)
• Etc.

Again, be creative and as flexible as you can without compromising the quality of the output or objectives.

All of the above is partly why I say I would deviate a bit, because I will be repeating many things here said in my future KPI and bonus posts, but I thought the combination of bonus+KPI was a very representative example of something hard to sell and get people on board with you.

Now, my blog is about managing in Asia, so, what this all have to do with managing in Asia? I'd agree with you totally that this is something applicable to any culture or company, but I've got to point out that it works better here for 2 reasons. First, people here are much more receptive and they take pride in their job, in the Western world some people are just there to get something done and they don't care why or what, they just care about the when they have to deliver it, and second, and probably the most important one, the work market in Asia is huge and people can change jobs as they change underwear, unlike in our side of the planet, where you almost have to kill someone to get a good job. My experience is that using the 'sell, not tell' technique, you're more likely to keep your people happy, and keeping people happy is keeping people from browsing jobs. After all, one of your own KPI's will most probably be retention, and you don't want to see your bonus cut, don't you? :)

I have the feeling that KPI's should be my next topic, but I haven't decided it yet. See you next with some undecided topic...